Transactional and Transformational Leadership: A Case Study of Apple Inc.

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TRANSACTIONAL AND TRANSFORMATIONSAL LEADERSHIP 1
Leadership is that ability of the individual or a management to set and achieve the challenges
by inspiring others to perform well. Good leaders help themselves and others to do the right
things. Leadership is about mapping out where the followers need to go to win as a team or
an organisation (Ruggieri and Abbate, 2013). For being, a good leader there are various
leadership styles has been provided such as charismatic, bureaucratic, democratic, laissez-
faire, autocratic, servant, transactional and transformational leadership style. The given case
study will provide its focus mainly on two leadership styles these are Transactional
leadership style and Transformational leadership style. Transactional leadership style is
leader uses punishment and reward to motivate its followers, in this style the leader focus on
enhancing the current situation of the organisation by developing steps and by controlling the
organisational activities (McCleskey, 2014). The main purpose of the transactional
leadership style is to overhaul the corporate culture and to enhance current procedures and
policies. In a transformational leadership style, the leader uses their enthusiasm and
influencing power to motivate their followers or team members to work for the benefit of the
organisation. The transformational leaders find the need of change in the existing
organisational culture, and then provide vision to the team members to implement and
incorporate change (Odumeru and Ogbonna, 2013). Transformational leaders act as a
motivator and a role model.
Apple Inc. is the America based multinational company that has its head office at Cupertino,
California. The founders Ronald Wayne, Steve Wozniak and Steve jobs established the
company in the year 1976 (Piao and Kleiner, 2015). The company mainly deals in
developing, designing, and sells of consumer electronics, online service and computer
software. The application software of the company includes Mac App Store, Apple music,
iTunes stores, and software of the company includes macOS, iOS operating system, iLife,
iWork etc. The hardware in which the company deals include iPhone, iPad, Mac, iPod, Apple

TRANSACTIONAL AND TRANSFORMATIONSAL LEADERSHIP 2
TV, Apple watches etc. Apple is the most successful company in the world and the business
of the company is been spread across the globe by 2018 the company is operating 500 retail
stores worldwide. The Net income of the company in 2017 is approx. US $ 48.351 billion
(Niebuhr, Vobe, and Brem, 2017). The success of the company purely depends on the
leadership of the top management. The success of Apple is also depending on the leadership
of its leader the two, main leaders who have to lift the company to this much height are John
Scully and Steve Jobs. Both John Sculley and Steve jobs were in the position of CEO in
Apple Inc. and both have performed really well to put the company on top.
John Sculley was born on 6 April 1939 he is an entrepreneur, investor and American
businessperson. In the year, 1970-1977 John Scully was the vice present of the Pepsi-Cola
but in 1977 he, left the job and join Apple Inc. as a Chief executive officer he held the
position until 1993 (Hunt and Fitzgerald, 2018). In 1983, he was a top paid executive with
the total annual salary of US $ 10.2 million (Pryor, 2015). John Scully is a great leader who
has contributes to the success of Apple Inc. The leadership style John Sculley adopted was
Transactional leadership style. John Scully is a transactional leader it is interchangeably
known as managerial leadership. The main aim of a transactional leader John Sculley is to
inspire their followers to adopt positive changes. He is dedicated fully to his work and has a
remarkable business vision. He is the type of leader who always expects best from his
subordinates and for that, he implemented the reward and punishment strategy. The top four
lesson the leadership style of the John Sculley is- he is a great leader who always looks ahead
to solve the big consumer problems- he believes that a great leader is a person who always
put the problems of the customers first and plans the activities of the business accordingly
(Renko, Tarabishy, Carsrud and Brannback, 2015). He states that the happy customers are the
key to the success of every business. Secondly, he believes in no matter what age the leader
has or at what level they reach just provide focus on learning new things. He is the risk taken